Name: Jordan Peterson - Stop Hiding! You Are Stronger Than You Think
Uploaded: 2025-04-16T20:24:47.000Z
Duration: 8 min 43 s
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The internal problem is how do you deal with tragedy and malevolence and you can say well, I'm not prepared.

Adverbs of manner

It's like yeah, fair enough Unsurprising especially if you were overprotected as a child It's not a good idea to over protect your kids because the snakes are going to come into the garden No matter what you do, and so then you instead of trying to keep the damn snakes away What you do is you arm your child with something that can help them chop them into pieces and make the world out of them so that the trick for human Thriving in the face of suffering and malevolence is strength not protection.

Adverbs of degree

It's a completely different idea We also know this clinically we know for example that if you treat people with exposure therapy for agoraphobia Which is roughly speaking the fear of Chaos?

I would say the fear of everything you don't make them less afraid you make them braver It's not the same thing because with an agoraphobic see what happens to them is the fall They never conceptualize death and suffering they're naive right it never enters their theater of their imagination And it's because they're protected from it But then something happens this this often happens to women in their 40s because they're the people most likely to develop agoraphobia Something happens there.

They've been protected from Chaos by authority their entire life So maybe they had an overprotective father And then they went to an overprotective boyfriend And then they went to an overprotective husband And maybe they were willing to be subjugated to all three of those because of the project protection right so so that's the bargain They stay weak and dependent and maybe they have to because that's the only way they can appeal to the person who's hyper protective But the price they pay for that is that they're not sufficiently competent And then something happens in their life often in their 40s.

They develop heart palpitations Maybe as a consequence of menopause their heart starts to Beat erratically and they think oh no death.

Who are you going to talk to about that right?

There's no protection from authority for that or maybe their friend gets divorced or maybe their sister dies or something like that It brings up the specter of mortality and maybe the specter of malevolence and mortality And it brings it up in a way that authority recourse to authority cannot solve and so then they have panic attacks What happens they go out they get afraid they feel their heart beating then they get afraid of their heart beating because they think oh?

I'm going to die and they think oh, no I'm going to die, and I'm going to make a fool of myself while I'm doing it and attract a lot of attention So the two big fears come up Mortality and social judgment, then they have a panic attack It's like fight-or-flight going out of control very very unpleasant Then they start to avoid the places they've had a panic attack Then they end up not being able to go anywhere So then tie a mat has come back right a huge monster a little victim, and so what do you do with them?

There's no time at that's done right their naivety is over They've had a direct contact with the threat of mortality and social judgment They've met the terrible mother and they met the terrible father, and there's no going back.

There's no saying oh the world is safe It's not safe not at all It's not safe the fact that you think it's safe means that you were living in an unconscious bubble that was sort of provided to By your culture, it's a gift and now that's been shattered, and so now what do you do?

Well the answer is you retreat until you're in your house, and there's nowhere you can go You're the ultimate frozen rabbit right and your life is hell because you can't function the alternative is Let's take apart the things you're afraid of let's expose you to them.

You know carefully and programmatically and Then you'll learn that you can you're actually tougher than you think You never knew that and maybe you didn't want to take on the responsibility because you know people play a role in their own demise so to speak when you had opportunity to go out and explore or Withdraw because you were afraid you chose to withdraw because you were afraid so it's not only that you were overprotected Often it's that you were willing to take advantage of the fact that you were overprotected and run back there whenever you had the opportunity You know so maybe you're a kid in the playground right and you're having some trouble with other kids And you know in the back of your mind I should deal this with deal with this myself But you go and tell your mom and get her to intervene and you know that that's not right You know that you're breaking the social contract But it's easier, and so that's what you do you run off to an authority figure and hide behind the great father, right?

Roughly speaking well the problem with that is you don't learn how to do it yourself So then you have to relearn it painfully when you're 40, so then you take people out You say well, what are you afraid of rank it from 1 to 10?

So 10 is make a list of 10 things you're afraid of the least the thing you're least afraid of will call number 10 So we'll start with that.

Let's let's look at a picture of an elevator Let's have you imagine Being in an elevator Let's go out to an elevator and let you watch the terrible jaws of death open because that's how you're responding to it symbolically Right and you're going to do that at it at the closest Proximity you can manage you find out you go do that it works You're nervous as hell especially and from an anticipatory perspective Shaking you go out you stop you watch it happen, and you actually calm down you do that ten times It no longer bothers you well what you've learned that you didn't die, but more importantly than that You've learned that you could withstand the threat of death That's what you've learned And then you move a little closer, and then you move a little closer And then you move a little closer and finally you're back in what's no longer the elevator from a symbolic perspective It's a tomb right it's it's it's a place of enclosure and isolation and you learn Hmm turns out I can withstand that and then you're met much more Together much more confident, and that's often one of the things that often happens in situations like that I've seen this multiple times is that if?

If you run someone through an exposure training process like that and and toughen them up They'll often start standing up to people around them in a way They never did before because they wouldn't stand up for themselves before because they weren't willing to Undermine the protection see if you're protecting me.

I can't bother you Because I can't afford to forsake your protection So if I'm going to play that game, I'm going to be high hide behind you then I can't challenge you So that's no good because that's sometimes why people you see this with guys very frequently They're still deathly afraid of their father's judgment when they're in their 30s or 40s It's like well Why not because they still want to believe that there's someone out there that knows and so they're willing to accept the subjugation Because it doesn't force them to challenge the idea that there's someone out there that knows because that's the advantage of having your father as A judge right because he knows Well, what if he doesn't what if no one knows any better than you?

Well, that's a rough thing you don't until you realize that you're not an adult, right?

That's really technically the point of realization of adulthood is that no one actually knows what you should do more than you do I mean, it's a horrible realization because what the hell do you know?

It's a terrible realization and people will often pick slavery Permanent slavery to the spirit of the great father.

Let's say over that realization and it's completely understandable But the problem with it is is that there's more to you than you think and so if you continue to hide Behind that figure then you never have a chance to understand that there's more to you than you think Far more to you than you think maybe there's enough to you so that you can actually withstand the threat of mortality without Collapsing maybe even withstand the threat of malevolence without collapsing.

Who knows it's certainly possible and It's not an abstract question.

It's exactly the sort of question that you address in the psychotherapeutic process It's it's always the question that you address and the answer is often in the affirmative Because people can get unbelievably tough and you know that because people work in emergency Wards and hospitals right or they work in in palliative care wards or they work as mortuary assistants I mean these people have bloody rough jobs, you know, or they're on the front line of police investigation into You know highness child abuse crimes and so they're confronting malevolence on a regular basis and you know, those are very stressful jobs, but people do them and Some people do them without even being damaged by them Although that's a harder thing because you can see horrible things, you know things you'll never forget